


headfirst slide into a bad bet

by ectobaby



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Attempted retcon, Candy John, M/M, Slow Burn, The Homestuck Epilogues, Time Travel, Timeline Shenanigans, ultimate dirk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:41:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22837987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectobaby/pseuds/ectobaby
Summary: Rose Lalonde has planted the seed, and John waters it with a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle.(Or, John attempts to undo the narrative as it's being written by visiting Dirk at various points throughout his life and offering him the only thing he has left in his own null timeline— His company.)ON TEMPORARY HIATUS! 5/8[HS2 kinda threw me for a loop and i need to recalibrate.]
Relationships: John Egbert/Dirk Strider
Comments: 39
Kudos: 139





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title is an altered version of "headfirst slide into copperstown on a bad bet" by fob. 
> 
> _I will never end up like him.  
>  Behind my back, I already am.  
> Keep a calendar, this way you  
> will always know._  
> 

It’s a morbid affair. Not that funerals can really be any other adjective. Celebration of life? That’s bullshit. They’re fucking sad and draining, and for the alarmingly high number of people in John’s life that have died, himself included, it’s odd that this is only his second one.

Two funerals with two blonde and shaded Strider corpses.

Not even the right shades either, he’d noticed. The glasses perched on Dave’s unmoving, gaunt face looked similar—aviators with a black, reflective lens—but they weren’t his. John knows because he gave Dave the real pair, wherever they are now.

Shit.

He leans against the counter of the funeral parlor’s kitchenette and takes a long swig of whiskey that burns down the back of his throat in a painfully familiar manner. This—this wasn’t supposed to happen. They were supposed to be gods, immortal and immune to everything but an honorable death. What heroic fucking deed could Dave have possibly performed alone in the middle of the jungle?

Nothing makes sense. He barely remembers a time when it did.

“Needed some quiet?”

John looks up from the bottom of his empty tumbler to find Rose at the electric kettle, pouring what was probably her tenth glass of tea. Her poison of choice. She holds out the dainty cup and John gives it a splash of his.

“Yeah. It got too loud.”

Rose hums. “They’re grieving.”

“So am I,” John snaps. He doesn’t mean to and she knows it. Her neutral expression barely changes. If anything, she looks sympathetic and the red lines beneath her eyes remind him that the world doesn’t spin around him. He’s not even sure if it’s spinning at all. Quietly, apologetically, he says, “We all are.”

“Yes.”

There’s not a whole lot left to say, so he lets the silence fill the gaps between them until even that’s too loud—the buzz of fluorescent lights, the whirl of the minifridge, the quiet clank of Rose’s spoon against the lip of her teacup.

“I keep thinking,” John blurts out, just to say something. He doesn’t even know what he’s thinking until it’s suddenly tumbling out of his mouth. “I keep thinking that maybe—if I could just pinpoint the exact moment in time—that maybe I could go back and change things. But that’s the thing. I don’t know. I don’t know what sent us down this road. Was it something big? Something small and seemingly meaningless? Did I step on a fucking bug and incidentally trigger a giant boulder of unfortunate events to come crashing through our timeline?”

He takes in a deep breath and bites his lip to keep from screaming. Rose watches him in that quiet, contemplative manner she always does, and he can tell she’s trying to piece together a tactful way to suggest therapy—or, at the very least, tell him that he needs to stop watching Indiana Jones with Jake if his metaphors are going to delve into giant rolling boulder territory.

Instead, she looks off into the distance and says, “Dave wasn’t wearing his glasses. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

John blinks and narrows his eyes. Maybe he’s not the only one who has completely lost it—but the point remains, she’s right. “Do you think his heroic death was trying to save his shades from an untimely demise?”

“That does seem like a very Dave thing to do.” Rose smiles; a small and sad thing. It’s almost jarring how much it reminds him of Dave—even how much it reminds him of Dirk, though in John’s distant memories, Dirk smiled a lot less.

“Yeah,” John sighs finally. “I noticed. Actually, it was one of the first things that I noticed and—that’s weird, isn’t it? I keep thinking about it and I don’t know why. It’s a really stupid thing to fixate on.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t?”

“No, not at all. It feels off because it _is_ off. Not just the curious case of Dave’s missing aviators either. You feel it too, don’t you? Something it isn’t right, almost like we are no longer pulling the strings. That is to say, if we ever were.”

John stands there thinking. Digesting.

Rose doesn’t wait for him because, if she did, she surely knows she’d be waiting all day. “I’ve been having strange dreams again. I’m in my body, but it’s not entirely mine. It’s a body that someone made for me.”

“Like a puppet?”

“A robot, actually. But yes, a puppet seems more fitting.”

“Oh,” John says, a bit dumbly. “That’s kinda cool.”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“They aren’t dreams. It’s like I’m looking into a window and watching these things play out. I gave up my body, handed over my soul. I left Kanaya and—”

“What? Rose, no offense, but I think these _are_ just dreams. Just you know, regular dreams. I guess nightmare would be more accurate. That doesn’t sound like you. For one, you’re not a robot.”

“It has to be me. The choices that I make—the decision to do so has to already exist somewhere in my heart. I think I’ve spent a long time convincing myself that I’m more level-headed than I actually am. But if these visions have proved anything…” Rose sighs and clicks her tongue disapprovingly. “None of this is making any sense to you. I suppose I should cut to the chase.”

John stares at the bottle of whiskey still sitting on the counter. He'd almost forgotten that he’s at a funeral. Maybe he’s had too much to drink. Maybe Rose has. This is insanity, but what isn’t?

“Go ahead,” he says.

“You see, the last time I inhabited this other version of myself, he noticed. He _knew_ that I was there, and he wasn’t the least bit happy.”

John groans, frustrated. He knows she enjoys this, the cryptic and round-a-bout way she releases information like the Egyptian sphinx, but holy shit, he doesn’t have time for it. To be honest, it’s making him antsy because he can _feel_ something coming. Something big looming in the atmosphere, a cloying and suffocating unseen presence. It feels _angry._

But then again, that could be the alcohol and crushing weight of losing his best friend. It’s really hard to fucking tell.

Still.

“Who?”

Rose blinks like the answer is obvious. Purses her lips and says, “Dirk.”

John chokes. “Dirk? Like—I’m sorry, Dirk Strider?”

“Do you know many more?”

“He’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“Rose. How many flowery cups of whiskey-tea have you had? What is wrong with this picture?”

She doesn’t dignify that with a response, and honestly, John’s not surprised. She pushes herself off the counter, where she’d been calming standing by his side, acting like everything was normal and not at all like she wasn’t spouting off batshit insane nonsense about dream robots and one of two very dead Striders. He’d say she’d lost it, if he didn’t know her.

But that’s the thing. He _does._

“Holy shit,” John breathes out, bracing himself. “So—what are you saying? Dirk has something to do with this?”

“I think so, yes.” She pauses and turns to him. “No, I know so. It’s not our Dirk though. He’s still very much dead as he was the day that we buried him. But something I’ve suspected for a while now…” She pauses again, and whether it’s for dramatic effect or because she’s thinking, John’s not entirely sure. “We are in a null timeline.”

Strangely, that doesn’t carry the weight that she’s clearly expecting it to. How could it when he’s so tired? He’s divorced. His son doesn’t speak to him. His best friend is dead. His world is fucked and to know that none of it matters? It’s almost a relief.

“So—what? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

John huffs out an exasperated laugh. “Great.”

“I’m working on it. But—whatever he’s doing—whatever Dirk is planning. It’s affecting us. We are key components in this game of chess now.”

“How do you know that?”

“Why else would he have taken Dave?”

John freezes, heart freezing in his chest. “What?”

“You didn’t notice?” Rose asks, genuinely perplexed. “His shades weren’t the only thing missing. His body is empty. The only thing in that casket is a hollow shell and knock-off aviators.”

He feels dizzy. Fuck. He might actually pass out. _Fuck._

John regains his bearings, or tries too, and braces himself on the counter again so that his knees don’t give out from underneath him. God, he’s too old for this shit. But he had a choice once, to step up and be a hero or settle down into domestic bliss and look where that got him. He’s thought about it, about how maybe _that_ was the deciding moment that doomed everything—that made this life, as Rose put it, null. Void.

Pointless.

He’s not going to let that happen again.

“How do we stop him?”

Rose is at the door now, hand perched on the frame. She can’t hide the pleased smile, no matter how faint. “You said earlier that you weren’t sure _where_ to go to change anything.”

“Yeah.”

“There are infinite moments in all of our combined timelines that could serve as a good starting point. But I’m afraid, non-linear as it is, most paths will lead us here.”

“That’s very reassuring, Lalonde. Thank you.”

“But I wonder,” she says thoughtfully, humming under her breath. “Do you think that if Dirk hadn’t been so lonely and isolated as a child that perhaps then any slip of control from his fingers wouldn’t feel like a personal attack? He’s trying to regain control of the narrative, that much is obvious.”

“Is it?”

“The point,” Rose continues, finally, as if John hasn’t been waiting on pins-and-needles for exactly that, “is that I can’t help but wonder that maybe if Dirk had a companion growing up, a friend like Dave had—a friend like _you._ Would that have made any difference at all?”

And at that, she leaves, slipping out of the kitchenette to mingle and grieve with the rest of their friends and family. That’s where he _should_ be—but no. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it isn’t at all.

Maybe…

Rose Lalonde has planted the seed, and John waters it with a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh, i have tears in my eyes over the feedback so far??? thank you?? :') anyway, this chapter is basically kid!dirk being a little shit and roasting john mercilessly and i had a really good time writing it.

Traveling through time and space never gets any easier and it’s certainly not the glitz and glamour all the old science-fiction movies make it out to be. John would liken it to being pulled apart atom by atom, squeezed through the head of a needle, and then reconfigured on the other side.

He _would,_ but he’s not that pretentious.

Instead, when anyone asks, he just tells them that it’s “exactly like _Timecop_ ” and leaves it there. Which, to quote, is a film that makes no attempt at scientific plausibility. So, really, he’s not far off the mark and someone would have to be both experienced in time-travel _and_ have seen _Timecop_ to call his bluff. The odds are really in his favor.

Still, even with his own experience, nothing prepares him for the lurch in his gut when he pops out on the other side, materializing into a corporeal existence over a vast expanse of ocean.

John reconfigures himself until he’s floating upright and takes in the scene laid out before him. In the distance, the sun is setting, casting an orange and pink glow against the water. Pretty, he thinks. It’d be the kind of image that you’d see on a postcard if it weren’t for the imposing silhouette of a lone tower breaking through the waves—disorienting and completely out of place.

(John can’t help but feel like maybe there’s a deeper meaning to be found there, poetically speaking, but it probably won’t be relevant.)

“Woah,” John breathes. “Neat.”

Okay. Maybe _neat_ isn’t the most accurate conclusion to come to when it’s in reference to a water-logged prison for a child. The logistics though—are there any? How does it…? Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Trying to figure this shit out will just make his brain explode, and then what use would he be? John bucks up and accepts the asinine logic of the universe for exactly what it is: _Asinine logic._

He floats closer to get a better look. Man, that’s a lot of windows. Is he going to have to look inside every single one like a Peeping Tom until he’s found Dirk? He’s already self-conscious enough about squeezing into his god-tier jammies at thirty-six. He guesses he didn’t have to, but for old time’s sake and things of that nature, it just felt right.

“Hey!”

John’s head snaps up from the first window, dark and empty inside, at a voice carried over the wind. It’s hard to see, even with the sun dipping beyond the horizon, so he cups his hands to shield his eyes and squints until he can make out a blobby figure on the edge of the roof.

“I said hey,” the voice calls down. “Can you hear me?”

Well, that was easy. He floats up, farther than the roof’s edge, and looks down at what is definitely a tiny Dirk, triangle shades and all. He’s sitting on the ledge, kicking his feet, completely unfazed by the waves crashing into the side of the building, and staring directly at John with his mouth pulled into a frown. He can’t be much older than ten.

“I asked—”

“Hey, Dirk,” John says. “Man, you’re a little younger than I thought you would be. Sorry. I’m a little rusty, I guess.”

Dirk tilts his head like a puppy. “Who are you?”

“Oh, right. You don’t know me yet,” John pauses. “Wait, do you know _anyone_ yet?”

“I know Sawtooth.”

“Who?” Dirk jerks a thumb over his shoulder and John follows the invisible path straight to a tall, cloaked robot with a baseball hat and a mouth like a bear trap looming menacingly in the background. “Did you build that?”

“Yes. He rap battles with me.”

“Of course,” John says. He didn’t expect anything less from a Strider. “That’s pretty cool.”

Dirk shrugs, still completely unfazed. “Do you want to know the _coolest_ thing about him?”

“You mean other than the fact that he’s a rapping robot that sort of looks like the grim reaper? Yeah, lay it on me,” John tells him, giving him two thumbs up.

Wow, alright. This is going great. Look at them go! They’re already bonding. At this rate, future Dirk will be changed for the better and it’ll all be thanks to this singular fated meeting on a roof in the middle of the ocean.

Dirk leans back on his hands, tilting his head up toward John. Even as a kid, he’s stoic to the point of concern. “He is also equipped with heavy artillery and programmed to obey my commands. Unless, of course, that command is to take it easy on me when we have a rap-off. Sawtooth shows no mercy.”

John’s mouth hangs open. Speechless.

“I’ve never won a battle with him. Not one,” Dirk says casually. “Do you think you could?”

“What the—”

“Do you?” Dirk presses and, as if to prove a point, Sawtooth shifts, opening his cloak like a seedy watch salesman to show off what John thinks might be a rocket launcher. In any case, the multi-barrel device is pointed directly at him.

“Where did you even get that?” John asks. Wrong move. Something clicks into place on Sawtooth’s form. Sounds a lot like the safety coming off. “Okay, jeez. I won’t ask any more questions.”

“You still haven’t answered mine,” Dirk says and resumes kicking his legs. It’s unsettling how juvenile the action in comparison to his whole, well, _everything_. “Go ahead.”

“What?”

“Who the _fuck_ are you?”

“Uh,” John says. He debates telling Dirk to watch his language. It would be the proper, gentleman thing to do—but he was saying worse shit at that age, so who is he to judge? He’s here to be his friend, not his dad. Though, shit. He’s _younger_ than Harry Anderson. He’s younger than John’s _son._

“Tick tock, dingus.”

“John,” he blurts out. It’s highly unlikely this death would be considered heroic, but he’d like to not be riddled with holes when he zips back to his timeline. “John Egbert.”

Dirk looks at him and years of dealing with Dave has taught John to know when he’s being served a heaping plate of patronizing glare beneath shades. “That’s a stupid name.”

“Hey!”

_“Egbert.”_

“ _Strider_ ,” John says, imitating Dirk’s disgust. “See? Everything sounds dumb when you say it like that.”

John sees it then. Just a flash, the tiniest crack of a smile, fleeting as it is—but it was there. Despite the loaded barrels pointed at his being and the less-than-friendly attitude given off by an adolescent Dirk, it still kinda feels like a win. 

“Question number two.”

“Isn’t it my turn?”

Dirk crosses his arms. “Okay.”

Oh. Alright. He hadn’t actually been expecting Dirk to be so amendable, and John realizes then that he doesn’t actually have a question. Or, rather, he _does_ but he needs to be careful with what he asks. Retcon tends to be tricky like that.

“Right,” John hums. “How old are you?”

“Eleven,” Dirk answers quickly. “My turn again.”

“Sure—”

“Who sent you?”

John stumbles a little, eyes going wide. Even more-so than asking questions, answering them is even harder. He can’t say Rose—that name means nothing to him yet. But he can’t really bring up Dirk—future Dirk, alternate Dirk? Sheesh, this guy as a lot of splinters. Including the one staring at him expectantly.

“No one—”

“Lie,” Dirk says flatly. “It was _her_ , wasn’t it?”

For a moment, John is confused—right up until he remembers the events of the timeline that Dirk grew up in. Oh, jeez. That’s…that’s probably what this looks like. John holds up his empty hands. See? Not a threat. “No, I wasn’t sent by the, uh, what did you call her? Batterwitch?”

“Let’s pretend I believe you.”

“Okay. You _should_ believe me, but okay.”

“Don’t really see why I should believe an old dude that just appeared in the sky and knew my name,” Dirk says pointedly, and John sighs. That’s fair. “So, you’re what? Some kind of time-traveling dick wizard?”

John scoffs. He doesn’t remember adult Dirk being this insufferable. Then again, he doesn’t really remember much of adult Dirk at all. There wasn’t a lot of time in the game and then after, well. He swallows and looks down at the kid still intently staring at him. Hard to think he’ll lose his head, figuratively and literally. Multiple times.

“You’re partly right.”

“About the dick wizard?” Dirk genuinely asks.

“What? No!” He groans and chances to float a little closer. Sawtooth’s mechanical body hums ominously in the distance and makes John think better of sitting next to Dirk on the ledge. “The time-traveling part.”

Dirk huffs what might be a laugh. “I knew that.”

“Sure.”

“So, why are you here…if not to kill me.”

 _The opposite_ , John thinks. _To save you._

Can’t really say that though.

“Oh, you know,” John says thoughtfully, buying some time. What as that thing that Dirk used to always say? Something ironically pompous…Right! He clears his throat and does his best pre-death Dirk impression: “To teach you about combat, philosophy, life, and love.”

A dark eyebrow rises suspiciously over triangular frames. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Dirk pauses, mouth a thin line, and deadpans, “I love it.”

John laughs a little under his breath and hesitantly drifts close enough to offer an extended hand. A proverbial olive branch, if you will. “Friends?”

Dirk stares at John’s hand, and then at John, and then back down. For a moment, he sees Dirk’s fingers twitch, inching just a little off his lap. He seems to think better of it, curling his hand tightly into a fist to scowl at it like it was moving on its own volition and he didn’t consent to handshakes with strangers. It’s at that moment, John realizes Dirk has probably never had any physical contact with another person.

Oh, man. That’s sad. He kinda just wants to hug him—

“No.”

“Huh?”

“We aren’t friends. I don’t even know—” Dirk slams his mouth shut and seems to think it over. “I don’t even know if you’re real.”

“What else would I be?”

“A brain ghost,” Dirk says, delivered in a manner that can only be pulled off by a kid living in the middle of the ocean with a robot.

“A _what?_ ”

“A person that lives in your brain.”

“Oh!” John says, lighting up. “Like an imaginary friend.”

That makes sense. Harry Anderson had one. That was a normal occurrence, right? John…well, he did sometimes imagine Nicolas Cage was pushing the swing when he was younger—but it feels sort of silly to say that was his imaginary friend—

“Sort of,” Dirk replies, shrugging. “It’s complicated. I don’t think you’re one though.”

“Oh,” John says, a little disappointed. What? Is he not cool enough to be a ghost? “Why not?”

“Well, for one, my subconscious wouldn’t name you something as lame as John Egbert.”

“Ouch.”

“And you would look a lot cooler too,” Dirk adds.

“Okay, sheesh. I get it,” John grumbles. Tough crowd. “Look, I’m just going to come back later.”

 _After you’ve learned some social skills from Roxy and the others_ , John doesn’t say. Dirk connected to them at around thirteen, right? He’ll go home, get some rest, make sure this encounter didn’t just make things worse, if that’s even possible, and then try again.

Dirk looks like he wants to say something, a worried little furrow to his brow. “You’re leaving?”

“Well, yeah, I can’t stay,” John explains. “You aren’t really making this easy either. I mean, there is still a heavily-armed robot turned in my general direction and you keep telling me how lame I am.”

“You _are_ lame.”

“See? Not helping!” John laughs. It’s not even forced. The whole thing is actually kind of endearing, but the truth is, he hadn’t meant to go this far back in the timeline.

“Sorry.” To his credit, he does sound at least a little apologetic. “It’s just weird.”

“Yeah,” John sighs. That he can agree with. “It’s pretty fucking weird.”

An oddly amicable silence falls between them—John, hover-floating above the calm ocean, and Dirk dangling his legs from the ledge. The wind blows softly, bringing in the scent of salt and sea. In the distance, the sun is still burning red but retreating steadily below the water. John takes the moment of peace from the insanity for what it is. It’s been a long time since he felt he could just breathe—and the irony of that sentiment doesn’t escape him.

“I’ll see you later.”

“When I’m older,” Dirk says. It’s not a question.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Okay,” John lies. He pauses long enough to see Dirk deflate. “Just kidding. Bye, Dirk.”

Dirk doesn’t say anything, but he does offer the smallest wave that John’s ever seen and that’s good enough.


End file.
